Something extraordinary is going on here. Yet, it seems quite ordinary. Let me first establish the basic facts regarding human sensory perception. Our eyes can sense a small portion of electromagnetic radiation. Our ears can sense small changes in air pressure. Our nose can sense a vast number of chemical compounds. Our tongue can sense the chemical reactions of the edible and the inedible. Our skin can sense the physical structure of things. Our thermoreceptors can sense the collective energy of matter. Our muscles and joints can sense the position of the body. Our vestibular system can sense the gravity and motion. Our nociceptors can sense the overload of these sensory systems, a safeguard if you will. I am well aware that different areas of the brain are processing these sensory data at the same time. However, each of them is processed at different rates. Sound is the fastest followed by vision and smell. So, the obvious conclusion is that it would take considerable attention and energy to calibrate all the sensory data into one seamless experience. However, this is not the whole truth. Our conscious experience is indeed seamless, but it is also effortless. We retain much of our attention and little energy is spent trying to calibrate the senses. The brain is using a trick to overcome the energy problem like tuning all the senses to an unvarying source of sensory data. Where is this data coming from? Think along the lines of using atomic clocks as a standard for all modern time-keeping services. We used to keep track of time by looking at the sun, the moon and the stars but their reliability is pale in comparison to the atomic clock. The atomic clocks are precise because the frequency of change is higher, and the uncertainties are much lower. The brain is using something analogous to atomic clocks. Which sense is providing this data? Yes, you have guessed it correctly. It is the balance sense a.k.a. the vestibular sense. Sensory data of the other senses are ever-changing, yet gravity is constant. The brain is using gravity data from the vestibular system to automatically calibrate all the senses (especially the stability of vision) into one seamless experience at the fraction of the energy required.

All life on earth is subject to the tyranny of gravity. It is an undeniable fact. Actually, the strength of gravity is not uniform for the entire planet. It changes with terrain, latitude and other factors such as earthquakes though the range of change is not very much. On the human scale however, the gravity is effectively constant. The ability to sense gravity was evolved in early history of complex life. The precursor to our vestibular system is the statocyst which can still be seen inside some marine invertebrates such as Mollusca, sea squirts, cephalopods, crustaceans etc. We and these invertebrates have shared a common ancestor in the early Cambrian period around 500 million years ago. Curiously, the statocyst also allows them to perceive low frequency sounds. This is connected to why our ears have both the function of hearing and detecting gravity. As soon as animals become more complex and start proliferating on land 100 million years ago, the statocyst starts to evolve into the vestibular system, which is a more sensitive organ. Semi-circular fluid design of the vestibular system is remarkably consistent. Sharks, birds, snakes, rats, cats and humans all have the same organ. Sizes may differ according the niche of these species however. An animal with distorted balance or no balance is an easy prey in the wild. As a result, the variations of the vestibular system stabilize with each generation. By that I mean, evolution leaves it alone since it works damn well.

vestibular system.jpg — The inner ear

Vestibular system

The balance sense is extremely important if you want to maintain a normal everyday life. We take it for granted. The loss of this sense will cause the most disruption compared to the mere loss of vision or hearing. It is easier to adapt to the loss of vision than to the loss of balance. Remember what I said about how the balance sense is crucial in creating a multisensory consciousness. Without it, all your attention is needed to synchronize the senses which leaves little energy to do everyday tasks like going to the mall, cooking, driving, even walking etc. You will feel dizzy, tired and disjointed. But it’s not all lost. When you lose the balance sense, the body instead rely more on vision and proprioception to balance yourself. They are not as good as the vestibular system of course. Just for the sake of argument that you abandon the person who have suffered a loss of the vestibular system in the wild, he will be killed very quickly. (It's cruel I know but it's only a thought experiment). This is why the variations of the vestibular system stabilize over time since those who lose it are eliminated from gene pool.

Fetus in the womb knows which way is up.

There is another reason why the balance sense is important. It helps us getting born. Let me explain. I have always wondered, and I am sure many of you who have had children would know this, why fetuses can hear the outside world while in the womb. The ears are developed quite early in the growing embryo along with the brain. Around the 3-month period. There are many explanations for this. The fetus can hear the voice of the mother and perhaps other family members as well. So, after it is born, it would recognize the sound of the mother for nurturance. There is even research on the newborns having the ability to distinguish between the sounds of the language it will be born into and foreign languages. You see, I am not satisfied with these answers. These are nice perks but not crucial to the survival of the fetus. The mother is the primary bond for the newborn yes, but it is fully capable of forming similar level of bonding with the father and alloparents such as the grandmother or the wet nurse. Why is it that the ear developed so early in the pregnancy unless evolution has recognized that it is more important than just recognizing the mother’s sounds? We evolved to speak language not that long ago and the inner ear is much older than this event. Maybe I am looking at the wrong sense. Our culture tends to favor hearing in terms of importance rather than the balance sense. The truth is that the balance sense is more crucial during fetal development for position adjustments and especially in preparation to being born. It must reorient itself in the liquid cavity of the womb so that the head will be the first to be pushed out. Many complications arise when this is not the case which sometimes lead to death for both the child and the mother. For fetuses that do not have a well-functioning vestibular system, they cannot align themselves properly. This is not good. Being born healthily is more essential to the survival of the species than recognizing sounds.

Now I will move onto the heart of the matter. According to the kinesthetic pleasure model, the vestibular system (the triangle) is embedded within the proprioception/motor system (the shield). The vestibular system is necessary to achieve all kinds of kinesthetic pleasure. Yet at the same time, you can induce it directly by engaging in balancing activities, acceleration or orientation. Read Kinesthetic Pleasure Model - Part 1 for more depth on the model.

Balance:

Skateboarding Competition in Malmö, Sweden

You shouldn’t be afraid of falling. Indeed, you shouldn’t be ashamed when you fall either. The internet is full of funny videos of people falling and making stupid mistakes. Finding humor in falling has become cliché. You see, falling is the precursor to competence. Choose any skill involving a balancing act. Learning to ride a bicycle. Learning to skateboard. Learning to surf on the waves. Learning gymnastics. Learning to coordinate cheerleading stunts. In all these activities, falling on your ass is the norm. You become self-conscious and humiliated in the first few instances. You will get injured. Everyone knows this. Yet there is a reason why we pursue these activities. Human beings seek out danger to control the chaos and become more competent. This act of being is very rewarding. The thrill is irresistible. When you become competent, you build lasting confidence. Which is why, it is ill advised for parents to meddle in when the children are trying out balancing activities. Let them have fun for goodness sake. Try to remember the earliest memory of your childhood. Do you remember how fun it is to spin around and fall down on the playground? The giggling among children when they fall together always makes me smile. I remember the time when I was playing with my friends, cousins and siblings. We were chasing each other and climbing various things. In our eyes, everything taller than our height is a mountain to conquer. Those were fun times.

Even something as simple as walking is not simple at all. Walking is controlled falling. It exists at the border between order and chaos. With each step, the vestibular system predicts the fall and the motor system stops it. This automatic prediction is hard-earned from years of struggle. Most people don’t remember how they learned to walk. They can only witness the struggle after they have their own children. Babies are persistent and courageous little things. They will fall hundreds of times. They cry sometimes but they keep trying. One time, I visited the Geffrye Museum of the Home in London. It displays the evolution of the British domestic life from the early 1600s to the present. Very fascinating. Anyway, I was looking around the museum and then met a young family. The mother was pushing the baby carriage and reading the exhibitions. While the father was carrying the baby and tried to entertain him in the meantime. The baby resisted from being carried by doing that signature move of twisting his back against the hold. He wanted to walk it seemed. I thought he must be around a year old. I am aware of them while also looking at the exhibition. So, his father had no choice but to let him be on the floor. The baby tried to stand up and then made exaggerated movements to compensate for the balance. After a minute of walking, he just fell. The father found this funny and made an interesting comment. I have a suspicion that his brain mirror neurons were simulating the baby fall. In other words, he felt it. He said to the baby while laughing, ‘How can you manage to fall on a flat surface?’ The baby looked confused by the laugh. I smiled when he said this because I understand how the vestibular system works. The baby brain is trying to predict the gravitational information coming from the vestibular system and the visual system but fails to do so. It is also trying to coordinate with the motor system at the same time. That’s why he fell on a flat surface. Over time, I am sure he will perfect the prediction and successfully learn to walk much to the pleasure of his parents.

This coordination between the visual system, the balance system and the motor system can be exploited for devastating effect. In Basketball for example, sense of balance is important in almost every move the players pull off. So, ankle breakers like Kyrie Irving are particularly dangerous. With his fast deceptive crossovers, shot fakes and other feigned moves, Irving forces ill-timed reactions in the defenders, making them fall on the ground. In other words, he disrupts the prediction between balance, vision and the motor system. If he can fool even one of these three systems, the entire machinery of walking and running breaks down. Ankle break doesn’t happen often because professional players are trained to be very good at maintaining their footwork. When they lose their concentration even for a second, Irving will take advantage of it. Plus, he gets a surge of pleasure every time he makes a player fall on the ground, proving the world of his dominance on the court.

Curiously, the English language use various vestibular metaphors to describe many dimensions of people’s lives namely their confidence, their self-independence, their patriotism, their ability to withstand adversity and even their time allocation between their careers and personal life. ‘Walking (or standing) tall’ is a phrase that encourages you to be proud and be confident in yourself. It is a call to steel yourself against any suffering in your personal life or the life of a nation in war times. ‘Walking on your own two feet’ doesn’t mean literally but rather used when the child grows up and become independent from her parents’ support. Of course, the most popular vestibular metaphor people use is ‘Work-Life Balance’. This phrase is interesting because it signifies that the person is carrying two distinct loads. If one load is heavier than the other, the person will fall to that side. That’s how I imagine it. The most popular imagery to describe work-life balance is juggling which requires superb balance sense to pull it off effectively. The language also applies the concept of falling to many economic phenomena in modern life such as bankruptcy, price of goods, currency exchange, unemployment, interest rates and wages. The devil is in the details regarding how we react to the fall of these factors.

Acceleration:

Lightning McQueen: Okay, here we go. Focus. Speed. I am speed. One winner, forty-two losers. I eat losers for breakfast. Breakfast? Maybe I should have had breakfast? Brekkie could be good for me. No, no, no, stay focus. Speed. Faster than fast, quicker than quick. I am Lightning.

The opening sequence of Cars movie was one of the best in hooking me into the fantasy world of anthropomorphic cars. The movie was developed at the height of Pixar dominance in 3D animation. It is an incredible achievement to depict cars as sympathetic beings that even children can relate to. I was probably 12 when I first watched this movie on a pirated DVD in Myanmar. I didn’t know anything about NASCAR or racing really. Yet somehow Lightning McQueen’s quote hooked me. There’s something about speed that my brain naturally likes. I have ridden with my cousin on a motorcycle. My uncle drove me around with his car. Me and my mom often hire a human-powered tricycle (a unique local transportation in Myanmar) when we go shopping for food. In all these instances, the increase in speed however slight produced the thrills. With the knowledge I have about vestibular system it all makes sense.

I have been wondering about this for some time. When the car is accelerating, it is a lot more pleasurable than when the car is travelling at constant velocity. (Electric cars exaggerate this effect due to high torque and relative quietness of the engine.) This fact is not just limited to vehicles. I also feel the same when I am riding a horse. If you remember your primary school physics class, when an object is at rest or travelling at constant speed, the forces acting on the object are at an equilibrium. We can feel this effect in the vestibular system. When the body is accelerating, the little calcium carbonate rocks in the inner ear move around which activates the balance neurons. They don’t move when the body is at rest or travelling at constant velocity. So, if the change in speed is rapid enough, the forces acting on the body instantly release adrenaline and fight and flight systems are activated to prepare for any potential danger. We feel a sense of thrill because the external environment is relatively safe, yet our body is ready for danger. It is the vestibular system that activates this eustressful feeling. (Wait a minute! Of course. This is why amusement park rides are so fun.) (Being pushed around by your friend while sitting on an office chair is also fun.) Ahem, men are arguably more attracted to this feeling than women. Somehow it is connected to testosterone and male dominance. When young men have access to fast cars and motorcycles, they naturally show it off among themselves to establish their status. Ancient dominance circuits in the mammalian brain is manifesting in the modern context. Fast & Furious series is famous because of this.

Racing game developers have struggled over the conundrum of ‘sense of speed’ for decades. How can you simulate a realistic sense of speed in the virtual world? Naturally video games are limited by three senses due to the design of game consoles: vision, sound and touch. So, game developers have to figure out sensory tricks to design it. These tricks in turn reflect back on how the brain recognizes sense of speed. Due to the limitation of our memory and attention resources, the present moment is felt to be around 3 seconds. After 3 seconds have passed, the present feels like it has moved into the past. Try reading a long sentence that lasts more than 3 seconds, you will feel the beginning of the sentence disconnect to the whole. (Good writing correlates with short sentences.) In other words, the brain updates the present moment every 3 seconds. This insight is important when designing racing games. The number of objects whizzing by the peripheral vision within the 3 second frame highly influences the speed you feel. This is because the peripheral vision is sensitive to any movement to protect against the pounce of predators. The developers also use particle effects, motion blur, a trail behind rear lights and the shaking of the camera to further stimulate the visual sense. In terms of sound, the explosive roar of the engine, the friction sound of the tires on the track along with the hiss of nitrous add to the immersion of driving a really fast car. The vibration on the controller simulates the textural feeling of the road and the position of the car. All of these techniques together convincingly make the player feel a sense of speed while sitting in their living room. Now you may be asking: there is something else missing, isn’t it? Indeed! The lack of balance sense in racing games is unavoidable. In real life driving, the balance sense contributes to the sense of danger that video games can never simulate. The fear of death is always there in the mental background. All professional racing drivers are addicted to the balance sense even though they may be unaware of it. This addiction to danger makes the difficult racing career worth it.

Orientation

Out of tens of thousands of candidates, a few are chosen to become astronauts. From these chosen candidates, only a handful are fit to fly to space. Being an astronaut is a hard job. It’s a really hard job. It doesn’t pay that well either. Not to mention the risk of death. So why so much interest? The obvious motivations are of course the prestige of being an astronaut, experiencing incredible interstellar views and contributing to the final frontier of human exploration. The dream of travelling to other planets and the stars is an easy sell but that’s not what astronauts spend all their time doing. We haven’t left the earth’s orbit in decades. NASA has planned a manned mission to Mars in 2030 and so chosen astronauts have been training on earth for many years now. On the other hand, astronauts on the International Space Station work constantly to fix the station, do scientific experiments and exercise so that they will be at peak shape in zero gravity. Zero gravity, yes. We crave the sensory experience of living in zero gravity since no such thing exists anywhere on earth. This is another reason why there are many applications for the job. You could pay for parabolic flights to experience zero gravity but only for a few seconds at a time. It doesn’t beat being an astronaut. When being in zero-g for extended period of time, you can have fun with Newton’s Third Law of Motion. On earth, it’s hard to demonstrate this law due to gravity interference but in space you can feel how things react in equal magnitude to your own force. So, astronauts push themselves around all over the station as if they are flying. They play around with water bubbles. They play guitar while floating upside down. Without gravity, they can fool around with different orientation of the body like planking. It’s intrinsically fun and pleasurable. Astronauts mention being like Superman a couple of times during my research.

Speaking of which, what is the difference between Superman and Spiderman? Apart from Batman who is my most favorite superhero, Superman and Spiderman tie for my second favorite spot. I just can’t bring my heart to choose who is the superior character. Superficially one can argue that they are heroes from different universes. Superman is from DC and Spiderman is from Marvel. Their powers are also vastly different from one another. Not to mention their philosophy. Let’s entertain these differences for fun. Perhaps we may discover a few important insights regarding the pleasure of the balance sense. Let’s start with Superman. Man of Steel is a representation of the ideal for humanity. An ideal we may never reach but a necessary landmark to orient ourselves in the world. His ‘S’ symbol means hope on the planet of Krypton. As humans see him as an ideal, he in turn has hopes in the goodness of humanity. From this perspective, he is no different than God. Indeed, Superman is an incarnation from a long line of traditional hero/god myths that have existed before. His godlike status comes with a suite of godlike abilities. Even compared to other superheroes in DC universe, he stands tall above the rest. His most noteworthy ability is flying. Humans have hoped to fly for a very long time. Only until the last two hundred years that we have invented rockets, planes and balloons to fly. But these inventions aren’t ‘true flight’ since they are still affected by gravity. Superman doesn’t need wings to fly. He just does. Gravity doesn’t have an effect on him since he transcends it. Like the astronauts in space, he is liberated from the dictatorship of gravity. When Superman flies, he is not afflicted with any vestibular illusions or changes in blood pressure like plane pilots are. Perhaps he may not have the same vestibular organ like us.

One of the important lessons in pilot training is overcoming the deadly vestibular illusions. If pilots close their eyes or fly in the dark, they perceive false orientation of themselves and of the plane like when they feel the plane is level when in fact it is slightly turning. That’s because human vestibular system is evolved to survive on the terrestrial dimension and it becomes confused in the presence of angular g-forces which are common in flying a plane. Instead pilots have to rely on their eyes and the onboard sensors to orient themselves. Even then the vestibular system poses considerable influence on the psyche. Sometimes this is a good thing since pilots feels pleasure from doing aerobatic maneuvers. In the context of flying a commercial airliner, vestibular illusions can be a nuisance.

Spiderman on the other hand is a more relatable superhero because he is vulnerable to gravity just like the rest of us. Spiderman doesn’t represent the ideal of humanity but rather our ability to overcome adversity. This philosophy is embedded in his traversal ability. Unlike Superman, he swings from building to building using his web. His parabolic web-slinging action is pleasurable to watch. One can only guess how much fun he is having. Spiderman comes across obstacles and verticality when he parkours throughout New York City, but they don’t bother him in the slightest. He overcomes them without any wasted movements. He adjusts his momentum and keeps moving forward. Sometimes he even performs tricks and maneuvers in the air for fun before attaching his web to the next building. His powers allow a unique sense of playfulness to emerge. Playfulness could only emerge from the absence of fear. We can learn from this mindset. In other words, Spiderman exists on the border between danger (chaos) and competence (order). Of course his sense of balance is superb. He needs it more than Superman does which is why he is a more relatable character. The closest pleasure we could get from being like Spiderman is doing rope swing, ziplining, bungee jumping, or good old parkour obstacle course.

As I have explained above, humans have invented a variety of strategies to experience pleasure from the vestibular system. It is an emergent effect of course. No one planned these explicitly. When Polynesians came up with surfing, they weren’t thinking that it would be a great pleasure for the vestibular system. They didn’t even know what a balance sense was. They simply realized through trial and error that riding on waves on a wooden board was a lot of fun. Then many generations later surfing became associated with religious symbols and royal superiority. This is why, I would like to understand the spiritual dimension of balance pleasure. Another prominent example I have found is the Mevlevi Sema ritual of Whirling Dervish from the Mevlevi Sufi order of Islam. Sufism is a unique sect in Islam where the focus is on spirituality and mysticism. And lots of singing and dancing. It is as different to traditional Islamic groups as Catholicism to Protestantism. In 2005, UNESCO added Mevlevi Sema Ceremony as part of the intangible cultural heritage list. These lists are basically cultural, social, artistic or religious traditions from all over the world that are worth remembering for future generations. In this ritual, whirling is a form of active prayer and meditation. It is performed in a group always accompanied by music. The theology behind is that all things in the universe spin as a result of gravity inertia and the conservation of angular momentum. So, the whirling dervish is an act to create one’s own spiritual center (one’s own Kaaba) within the body like the center of a spinning galaxy. Not surprisingly, the practitioners are overcome with dizziness when they start training for the ritual. It is fun to spin like a child at first. Eventually after a month or two, their vestibular system becomes used to the spinning motion and treat it as the normal mode of existence. When this is achieved, they become overwhelmed with a spiritual ecstasy unlike anything else. Music escalates this feeling to the next level. What is going in their brains during this transformation? I would very much like to know. After the ritual has ended, these Sufis feel very calm and ready to face any challenge life can throw at them. Remarkable indeed. There is a lot more to balance sense than you anticipated before you start reading this chapter, isn’t it? Congratulations for reading this article by the way. If you have managed to read all the way to the end without skipping, you deserve a slice of cake.

Kinesthetic Pleasure Model - Part 2

Balance:

Acceleration:

Orientation

Further Reading (for both part 1 and 2)

© PEL COnsulting

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